What identity for Europe? Communication, memory, and citizenship.

Gil Baptists Ferreira

Περίληψη

The purpose of this article is the debate around the European identity. Two types of political identification are taken into account, sustaining the idea of the nation from a cultural and ethnic point of view or from a civic and political perspective. From here, the discus­sion will center on the possibility of a European identity and to what extent that identity will be shared by citizens from different nationali­ties. As will be demonstrated, communication plays a crucial role: as a form of participating and asserting the difference, and associating the universalism of the normative principles to the particularism of the concrete forms of identification. Finally, we suggest the conception of a European identity that reflects, simultaneously, a historical and cultural ballast in which people can trust, and on its own civic culture that, respecting the identities recognizes sensibilities, interests, the arguments.